Did Kern still wonder about her?
If so, their wolf-eyed leader had hardly given any sign of that. He’d hardly shown much more in the last few weeks than a single-minded pursuit of the Vanir who continued to raid and rape Cimmeria. But at last they were looking back toward the valley, and home.
What was Kern thinking?
Whatever it was, Ehmish trusted their leader to tell him when he needed to know. One more thing he felt he owed.
As a man.
SENDING THE BOY after him had been smart. Though Gard doubted that Desagrena or Kern or whoever had done so had intended it as anything more than a way to run Ehmish off. To keep him from underfoot.
How would they have known? None of them had ever met Alaric Chieftain’s-Son. Couldn’t know how close Ehmish resembled Sláine Longtooth’s boy—one of Gard’s best warriors when he’d been Cruaidh’s protector.
In his first life.
Such an idea would not have gone well around an evening campfire. It didn’t sit well with Gard now, for that matter. Cimmerians learned from a young age that Crom had done his part by gifting the men and women with incredible strength and a powerful will to meet any and all challenges cast upon them. Crom had even wrestled with the other gods in the before-time. With Ymir, the frost-giant god of the northerners, who had wanted to promote the Nordheimers over the Cimmerians.
Because of Crom’s victory, the Vanir and Aesir people had been banished north of the Eiglophians, and the Cimmerians’ god had been able to leave behind the troubles of mortals. Grimnir the Terror, with the blood of Ymir running through his veins, might think to rekindle that ancient fight. But Gard Foehammer and his kinsmen would always find the strength to stand against such a creature.
Crom had done his part. Now it was time for all right-blooded Cimmerians to do theirs.
But then, where did that leave a man like Kern? A son of Ymir and Crom. Outsider to both Nordheim and Cimmeria and certainly scorned by both gods as well. Did he make his own path?
That was what Gard had thought back in Cruaidh. There, he’d given the wolf-eyed warrior the benefit of his doubt. And the man hunted Vanir, fought Ymirish—how could Gard have thought less of him? Then again, that was the life when he had respected Sláine Longtooth. The life that had existed before he should have died on the battlefield above Broken Leg Glen.
“Then you are fine?” Ehmish asked.
Having lapsed into silence for so long, standing so still, like Daol or one of the other hunters who had so trained themselves not to disturb their surroundings, that Gard had forgotten him.
Or, Gard had simply grown too accustomed to his blindness. Now the outside world did not register unless it directly threatened him. Which was why he watched the rain, beginning to drift back into scattered squalls. Caught the glimpses by the reddish-orange glow of the fresh rock flow. Tried to make out each red-gray blur before he lost it again in the smothering dark.
“I might be,” he said. Turning his back on Ehmish, he left the young man with his question unanswered as he went in search of Kern Wolf-Eye.
Near a slaughter pit, where Brig Tall-Wood and Hydallan had butchered two of the wounded horses. The place rank of death and blood. Pieces of hide, scraped clean, had been set aside for possible salt-curing. Large hanks of the horseflesh had already been wrapped in oilskins for tomorrow’s meals.
The men gathered around two of the merchant’s flaming brands, which were able to ignore the rain as they dripped bits of oily fire. Kern argued with the head merchant and the caravan’s chief of guards. The southlanders were still trying to convince Kern to travel north again, helping secure their safe passage up to Callaugh and Conarch, where they would trade for blue iron before forcing the Pass of Blood to Cruaidh. A very usual spring trade route, Gard remembered.
“We’re down twelve men,” the merchant, Tahmat, was saying as Gard joined the small knot of men and women. “Nearly as many horses. I need strong backs and steady blades to get my goods through safely.”
A large, heavy man who wore padded leather armor beneath a voluminous brocaded robe of deep moss green. He was round in the middle, with short, thick legs and a second chin thickening his neck. Tahmat was certainly fat. He had also shown some skill with an arming sword and a great deal of hidden strength. One of those trapped in the caravan’s rearguard action, Ashul and Wallach Graybeard had already talked about how the caravan merchant had used the distraction of their arrival to lay hands on one of his attackers and bodily lifted him off the ground. Hurling him into the other raider.
And the merchant was still alive after a running battle that had lasted most of a day. That was saying something as well.